Love and War nas-2

by Джон Джейкс

  Brett lay in her camisole. Hot yellow twilight filled her room this twenty-ninth of June. She was exhausted from helping Mrs. Czorna scrub floors all day. Coming back to Belvedere, she had deliberately avoided Stanley and Isabel and their obnoxious sons, who were playing lawn bowls on the grass between the two houses.

  It still surprised her that she was reading — well — differently from before. It was another result of long and frequent conversations with Brown. She resented the way he constantly thrust the issue of Negro liberty at her, but she was beginning to grasp why he did; why he must. She was also beginning to feel herself in the grip of uncomfortable personal changes.

  One of the maids tapped on her door, announcing supper in a half hour. She rose reluctantly, splashing water on her face and bare arms. The yellow sun, growing red, sank in the west.

  She hated to see sunset come. Fears about Billy, and her need of him, affected her most at night. In the last two weeks, coincident with Stanley's unexpected and still-unexplained arrival, Brett's fears had sharpened because of the military threat to the state. For days now, government workers and private citizens had been packing papers and valuables and leaving Harrisburg by rail, horse, or shank's mare. Last Friday, Governor Curtain had issued a plea for sixty thousand men to muster arms and defend Pennsylvania for three months. On Saturday, the invasion had been confirmed. Terrified officials surrendered the town of York to Jubal Early, and Lee's host was sighted at Chambersburg. The whole lower border was afire with panic and rumor, and the smoke blew to every part of the state.

  A few minutes later, dressed and sweltering, Brett stepped onto the front veranda. No air was stirring.

  "Brett? Hallo! Important news here."

  The thickened voice belonged to stuffy Stanley. In shirt sleeves, he brandished a newspaper on the porch of his own residence. She wanted to be rude but couldn't do it. The supper bell would ring soon; she supposed she could put up with him till then.

  In the molten light spilling from the west, she walked next door, her shadow three times her size on the brass-colored lawn. "What is it?" she said from the foot of the steps. She smelted gin on him and noticed his glassy look. She could hear the twins cursing and quarreling somewhere upstairs.

  Swaying from side to side, Stanley held out a copy of the Ledger-Union. "Papers got a telegraph dispatch from Washington. On Saturday" — his slurred speech injected a sh sound — "Pres'dent Lincoln relieved Gen'ral Hooker. Gen'ral Me's now in command."

  "General who?"

  "Me. M-e-a-d-e. Me."

  Drunk, she thought. At the other house, she had overheard some servants' gossip about Stanley's new habit. She said to him, "I'm afraid I don't know either of those men or anything about their qualifications."

  "Gen'ral Me is solid. 'F anyone can stop the reb invasion, he can." A nervous glance southward. "By God, wish we'd settle all this."

  He struck his leg with the paper. The sudden movement threw him off balance. He prevented a fall by clutching one of the porch posts. For a moment, Brett pitied him. She said, "You don't wish it any more fervently than I."

  He blinked, then pulled at his fine linen shirt where it stuck to his armpit. "Know you'd like to see Billy home. So would I. 'Course — family loyalty isn't the only reason I want this blasted war over. Have some political ones, too. Nothing pers'nal, now" — a smarmy grin — "but we Republicans are going to change ol’ Dixie Land forever."

  She fanned herself with a handkerchief, irked again by his alcoholic smugness, yet curious. "Oh, you are? How is that?"

  He put his finger over his lips to signal secrecy, then whispered, "Simple. 'Publican party will pretend to be the friend of all the freed niggers down there. Ignorant lot, niggers. 'F we give 'em the franchise, they'll vote any way we tell 'em. With the niggers voting, our party'll be the majority party before you can say that."

  With a broad, almost violent gesture, he managed to snap his fingers. Once more his balance was threatened. Brett caught his arm and steadied him until he lowered his heavy rear into a bent-wood rocker, which sagged and creaked loudly.

  "Stanley, that's a very cold-blooded scheme you described. You're not making it up?"

  The smarmy smile broadened. "Would I lie to my own rel'tive? Plan's been drawn up a long time. By a certain — inner group." He rolled his eyes. "Better not say any more."

  Outraged, Brett retorted, "You said quite enough. You're going to exploit the very people you purport to champion —?"

  "Purport." He dragged it out, savoring the sound. "Purrr-port. Perrr-fect word." He snickered at his own humor. "Niggers wouldn't understand it, an' they won't understand that we're using 'em, either."

  "That's utterly unscrupulous."

  "No, jus' politics. I —"

  "You'll excuse me," she said, her tolerance exhausted. "I must go to supper."

  He started to say something else, but a sound much like the bleat of a billy goat came from an upstairs window. Someone had hit someone else. One of the twins screamed, "Get out of my things, you thieving shit."

  Sickened by Stanley's drunken statements, Brett walked rapidly back to Belvedere. Though she considered Billy's older brother stupid and venal, she feared that the plan he had described could very well work. The blacks, except for a few of the well-educated ones like Scipio Brown, would logically put their trust in the Republicans. And if they were given the right to vote, they could indeed elect whomever their benefactors chose. Brett had no great liking for the Yankee President, but she couldn't imagine him being party to such a vile scheme.

  Hot and angry, she ate supper alone. Maude, one of the serving girls, worked up nerve to say, "Everyone's talking of a great battle. Will they come this far to fight?"

  "I don't know," Brett answered. "No one's sure of the whereabouts of either army."

  In darkness reddened by the light of Hazard's, Brett walked into the hills, hoping to find cooler air. Where was Billy? She had had no letters for nearly three weeks. He was fighting for what he believed while Stanley cowered in Lehigh Station, sipping gin and boasting of his political plans.

  She wandered higher, through the laurel that lay thick and dim on the heights. There was no wind to stir the deep green leaves, and in the hazy night the stars had a red cast.

  By chance, her walk took her past the spot where a meteorite had struck one of the slopes. She and Billy had discovered the smoking crater only hours before his departure for Washington in the spring of '61. The crater had seemed to be a warning, and what it had warned of had come to pass. By the light of Hazard's furnaces and chimneys, she saw that the crater was shallower than before. New dirt had washed into its bottom, and the chunk of what Billy called star-iron was no longer visible.

  The laurel grew all around the crater, to the very edge. But none grew within the crater itself. Curious, Brett leaned down for a pinch of loose earth from the crater well. It had a gritty, sandy feel. A strange, sour smell.

  Was it somehow poisoned, like the nation was poisoned? Poisoned by hatreds, by loss of lives, by the punishment the land deserved because some of its people had chained up so many others for so many years?

  Why, they would take a whip to you down on the Ashley if they knew you harbored such thoughts. Yet she wasn't ashamed of them, only surprised. She had changed. She preferred the friendship and respect of a Scipio Brown over that of a Stanley Hazard.

  Absently, she broke off a sprig of laurel. She remembered Billy likening the laurel to their love. He said both would survive these awful times. But would they?

  Where was her husband tonight? Where were the armies? Could Harrisburg be burning and they not know it in this peaceful valley? Shivering under the red stars, she gazed away to the darkness in the southwest, imagining the unseen armies sniffing the hot night for scent of each other.

  Upset and frightened, she flung the sprig away and hurried down the hill past the poisoned crater. She didn't fall asleep until the first light of morning.

  84

  Lee had d
isappeared into enemy country. A city, a government, a land held its breath in hope of good news.

  There was none from the West, Orry told Madeline. Rosecrans was astir in Tennessee, and Grant's hand crushed Vicksburg more tightly by the hour. Orry's work was a blur of conferences, memorandums, constant arguments with Winder and his wardens over the increasing number of deaths among the war prisoners.

  In the evenings, he and Madeline read aloud to each other. Now and then they indulged in sad speculations about their inability to conceive a child. "Perhaps Justin wasn't wholly wrong to blame me," she said once.

  They studied and responded to occasional letters from Philemon Meek. And they entertained Augusta Barclay one day, enjoying her company while recognizing how anxious she was about Cousin Charles. She said she had traveled all the way to the capital to find some dress muslin, but she really wanted to inquire about him. She had received no letter in two months and feared he'd been wounded or killed in the cavalry clash at Brandy Station.

  Orry assured her that he watched the casualty rolls, and so far the name of Major Charles Main had not appeared. Gus knew nothing of the field promotion. She said she was pleased, but she sounded unenthusiastic.

  She accepted their invitation to supper. During the meal, they speculated on Charles's whereabouts. Orry knew that Hampton's horse had gone into Pennsylvania with Lee, but beyond that, he could provide no information. They said good-bye after ten, Gus intending to travel all night on lonely roads with only young Boz to guard her. Just before she left, she again expressed gratitude to the Mains for sheltering her during the Chancellorsville fighting and said she wanted to repay the kindness if ever she could. Madeline thanked her, and the women embraced; they had formed a liking for each other.

  After Gus was gone, Madeline said, "Something's wrong between her and Charles, though I'm not sure what it is."

  Orry agreed. Like his wife, he had detected a certain sadness in the visitor's eyes.

  Something was wrong with Cooper, too. Orry saw his brother occasionally around Capitol Square. Cooper was abrupt in conversation and refused further invitations to dinner with a curt "Too busy right now."

  "He's become a stranger to me," Orry told Madeline. "And not a very sane-looking one, at that."

  For some months, Orry had known that Beauchamp's Oyster House on Main Street was a postbox for illegal mail to the North. In late June he wrote a long letter to George, addressing it in care of Hazard's of Lehigh Station. He asked how Constance was faring, and Billy and Brett, told of his marriage to Madeline, and mentioned Charles's service with the Iron Scouts. He also described, briefly and somewhat bitterly, his work for Seddon, and his constant conflicts with Winder and the prison wardens. On a sultry evening, wearing the one civilian suit he had brought from Mont Royal, he nervously entered Beauchamp's and handed the wax-sealed envelope to a barman, together with forty dollars of inflated Confederate money. There was no guarantee the letter would get any farther than some trash bin. Still, Orry missed his old friend, and saying it on paper made him feel better. The June heat continued. And the waiting.

  "I'm worried," Ashton said, the same night Orry mailed his letter.

  "About what?" Powell said. Naked except for drawers, he sat examining the deed to a small farm he and his associates had purchased. The place was situated on the bank of the James, below the city near Wilton's Bluff. Powell hadn't explained why owning it was advantageous, though Ashton knew it had something to do with the scheme to eliminate Davis.

  Powell's perfunctory question made Ashton snap, "My husband." He heard the pique in her voice and laid the deed aside. "Every morning he questions me about my plans for the day. When I was shopping downtown yesterday, I had the queerest feeling I was being watched — and then, from the vestibule of Meyers and Janke, I spied James on the other side of the street, lurking behind a water wagon and trying to look inconspicuous."

  A hot breeze blew from the garden, riffling pages of the deed. Far away, heat lightning shimmered. Powell's four-barrel Sharps lay near the document. He placed the gun on the deed like a paperweight and lightly drummed his fingers on the stock.

  "Did he question you this evening?"

  She shook her head. "He was still at work when I left."

  "But you think he knows."

  "Suspects. I don't want to say this, Lamar, but I feel I must. It might be better if we stopped these meetings for a while."

  His eyes grew glacial. "Do I take that to mean I've become a bore, my dear?"

  She ran to him, reached down from behind his chair and pressed her palms to his hard chest. "Oh, my God, no, sweet­heart. No! But things are going badly for James. He's — disturbed. No matter how careful you are, he might take you by surprise some night. Harm you." She began to rub slowly, near his waist, her bodice pressing the back of his head as she bent toward the chair. "It would kill me if I were responsible for something like that."

  Powell guided her hand lower, murmuring, "Well — perhaps you're right."

  He allowed her to continue a moment or so, then abruptly took her hand away and nodded at another chair. She sat obediently as he spoke. "My personal safety's the least of my concerns. Momentous work is under way. I wouldn't want it interrupted by some witless and preventable act of violence. To tell you the truth, I have been a bit worried about your husband." He brought his fingertips together and peered over the arch. "Last week I hit on a way to make sure he doesn't threaten us. I've pondered it since then, and I'm convinced it's sound."

  "What are you going to do, get him dismissed and sent home?"

  Powell ignored the sarcasm. "I propose to recruit him for our group."

  "Recruit him?" She jumped up. "That is the most ridiculous, not to say dangerous —"

  "Be quiet and let me finish."

  His cold voice stilled her. Cowed, she moved back to the chair as he continued. "Of course that is precisely how it sounds — at first. But think a moment. You can find logical and compelling arguments in favor of it."

  "I'm sorry, I fail to see them," she countered, though not loudly.

  "In any enterprise of this kind, one always needs a certain number of — call them soldiers. Men to carry out the most dangerous phases of the plan. In our case, the men must be more than trustworthy; they must be foursquare against the black vomit of nigger freedom, because only that kind of fervor will beget absolute loyalty. Our soldiers must hate Davis and his coterie of West Point bunglers and Jew bureaucrats, and endorse the formation of our new Confederacy. Except for the last aspect, which he as yet knows nothing about, I submit that your husband meets the specifications in every particular."

  "Well, put that way, perhaps he does."

  Powell's sly smile broadened. "Finally, would it not be far better to have him close by, where he can be watched, than to have him running about on his own, as he's doing now?" The low-trimmed gas cast his shadow across her as he padded around the table and fingered a lock of her hair. "With your husband actively involved, it would be far easier for you and me to see each other. I don't think he's clever enough to suspect the ruse."

  "I agree about that — especially now that he's in such a state about the failures of the President."

  "You see? It isn't such a crazy notion after all."

  He curled the strand of dark hair around his index finger, then moved the finger gently back and forth. "But suppose, despite every precaution against it, he did find us out. Became unbalanced, therefore untrustworthy —" He let the hair fall and laid his hand on the four-barrel Sharps. "That, too, can be dealt with."

  Ashton's eyes leaped from his face to the shining gun and back again. Frightened, joyous — aroused suddenly — she flung her arms around his neck, kissed it, and whispered, "Oh, my dearest Lamar. How clever you are."

  "Then you don't object to my plan?"

  "No."

  "Not to any part of it?"

  Over his shoulder, she saw the Sharps shining on top of the deed. "No — no. Anything you want is fine,
as long as I can stay with you always."

  Against her skirt she felt him, large and potent. She felt she was touching more than something physical. She was touching his strength; his ambition; the power they would ultimately share.

  "Always," Powell repeated, picking her up as if she weighed no more than a child, "To ensure it, however, we must agree that James Huntoon, Esquire, is expendable."

  Her open-mouthed kiss gave him the answer.

  Late on Wednesday, July 1, Stanley stepped from the first-class car of the train from Baltimore. Even cushioned by swigs from a bourbon bottle, he could hardly accept all that had happened to him in the past twenty-four hours.

  Rumors of an impending battle had reached Lehigh Station. He and Isabel had been packing to retreat to the family's summer home, Fairlawn, in Newport, when Stanton's angry telegram arrived. Stanley had traveled most of last night and all of today, buffeted by crowds talking of nothing but the battle about to begin, if it hadn't already, in the vicinity of the market town of Chambersburg. Exhausted and half drunk, Stanley entered the secretary's sanctum at half past six. He endured ten minutes of Stanton's wrath, then took a hack to the north side of Capitol Square.

  Squalid shops and barracks had grown up around the old brick building at First and A. By turns, the building had been a temporary national capitol after the British burned the official one in August 1814, a rooming house for senators and representatives — Calhoun had died there — and, since '61, a prison for a wide variety of inmates. These last included female spies working for the Confederacy; sharps and prostitutes; newsmen; fight-prone officers such as Judson Kilpatrick and George Custer.

  Stanley had sent messages ahead. Baker's bay, Slasher, was tethered to the ring post at the First Street entrance. The colonel was waiting outside, truculent but clearly nervous. With him was the prison superintendent, Wood.